


Hungry

by tuesday



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Background Character Death, Gen, Horror, Mind Manipulation, Minor Stephen Strange & Wong, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-10-31 10:55:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20792279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: It's a baby.





	Hungry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seinmit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/gifts).

> Written for the tag " Accidental Monster Baby Acquisition."
> 
> Personal notes: OPD: 9/27. AOD: 9/3.

It's a baby.

It's got little octopus limbs instead of arms, complete with suckers, and seventeen eyes, including one huge one in the middle of all the tiny ones scattered on either side, and teeth like a shark in several jagged rows. But it's a baby. It's small enough to fit in Stephen's arms, and it gurgles happily when the cloak drapes a fold of cloth around it, and it stares at Stephen with uncomprehending trust. Apparently it imprinted on him.

Stephen stares back with unmitigated horror.

"Congratulations on your adoption," Wong says. He sounds bored, disinterested. He's already weaving a spell to find out where it came from.

* * *

The baby's original name is lost with its parents. Then again, considering that said parents had been snacking on their offspring when Stephen found and banished them and that only a few of each litter were expected to survive to adulthood, it may not have had a name in the first place. Even if it did, its species' native tongue doesn't include sounds the human tongue is capable of reproducing.

It needs a name.

"Bob," Stephen decides. "I'll call you Bob."

Bob, the last of its kind in this dimension. It's not an auspicious name, but maybe that's the point.

"I think it's one of the egg layers," Wong says.

Stephen doesn't think it matters. Bob isn't exactly going to be going anywhere in public until it—she—can maintain an illusion and knows better than to catch and eat wild animals. Stephen had caught her thinning the flock on the New York City sanctuary roof, which is what brought her—and then her parents—to their attention in the first place.

"Bob," Stephen says, lifting the baby into his arms, "let's introduce you to the apprentices."

Wong keeps his distance as he trails after them. He keeps looking at Bob, only for his gaze to drift away, like he's caught in the constant process of remembering and forgetting they took her in. The apprentices, meanwhile, are excited for this baby in their midst. She is kind of cute with her triple-lidded eyes and soft, squishy skin.

It's easy to love her.

* * *

Bob is smart, with both an animal cunning focused on how to find and acquire food, but also something not human, but sentient. Her first word is "Strange."

Stephen tries and fails not to feel warm and paternal at this. He's not keeping the baby, only raising her until she can survive on her own when she's banished to the same dimension as the rest of her kind.

"Strange," she says, recognizably his name, though the "s" is more a wet "shhh" and the "ge" a guttural growl. She lifts her tentacle arms.

Stephen sighs and picks her up. "What have I said about hunting the pigeons?"

He brushes feathers off her face. She burbles happily and twines her limbs about his left arm.

* * *

Bob will eat anything. Books, bits of carpet, wooden paneling, drywall. Her favorite is meat, fresh, still warm. Stephen gives her bloody steak, and she happily accepts, but leave her alone in a room, and she'll hunt spiders, then start gnawing on the carpet.

"Strange," she says in her thick, gurgling voice. "Hungry."

"I'll drop by the butcher again," Stephen tells her, patting her on the smooth crown of her head. Her eyes blink slowly, happily, and he lifts her into his arms. She's heavier. Soon, she'll be too big to carry.

* * *

Bob looks like a human toddler when she wants to now. Stephen doesn't know why he thought that meant he could take her on a walk. He's got a stroller the apprentice assigned as her babysitter picked up as a joke a while back. They go to the park. He looks away for just one minute—

He looks back and she's swallowing a squirrel's tail, the bushy fur disappearing behind pale, bloodless lips. She growls at one of the other children. She's hungry, so hungry that _Stephen_ can feel it as a hollow ache in his abdomen. He doesn't know what these humans, with their unprotected minds, are experiencing it as.

"Bob." Stephen holds out his arms. "Let's go to the butcher's." They'll buy her goose necks and liver. She likes the snap of bone, the way the liver shreds in her teeth.

Bob stares at the neck of one of her fellow children.

"Bob," Stephen snaps.

Bob scurries over. Her illusion holds, but he can feel her suckers clinging to his neck. Through their connection, he can see her true face under the false one. Her teeth are sharp digging into his shoulder through his robes. The cloak flinches away.

* * *

"She's old enough to go home," Wong says. He's wearing an amulet Stephen's mind shies away from. He's carrying some sort of scepter Stephen should surely recognize.

"She's a child," Stephen says.

Bob peers out from behind his legs. She needs him. She's always needed him.

"She doesn't belong here," Wong says. The lines of his face are stiff, unforgiving.

"She belongs with me," Stephen says. "She's mine, my daughter."

"You're consuming him," Wong says. He's not looking at Stephen, directing his hard stare at Bob. "Soon there'll be nothing left. He'll be empty meat to puppet, just like that apprentice."

"Strange," Bob warbles.

"Leave her alone," Stephen says. He prepares himself for a fight.

The cloak wraps itself around him and slams him against the ceiling. It stays there. He can only watch as the scepter emits a blinding light, can only listen as Wong chants words his ears refuse to hear. In the middle of that light, there's a shadow that stretches to fill the whole room. It's banished.

The last words Bob cries are, "Strange, hungry."

They sound mournful. They sound apologetic. They sound loving.

* * *

When he's recovered, Stephen says, "Where you sent her—"

"She'll be fine," Wong says. His eyes are watchful. "There's a whole dungeon dimension of monsters for her to eat."

"Good." Stephen closes his eyes. He strokes the collar of the cloak. He says, "I'm never having children."

* * *

Sometimes, at night, Stephen dreams he can hear her voice. He dreams she's happy.

She was just a baby, but she's bigger now.

"Children grow," she tells him, all seventeen of her eyes lit up from within. "I'm growing." Her limbs wrap around his whole body. "Someday, I'll grow big enough that nothing can stop me." She burbles with joy. "Father, I promise: on that day, I'll come back for you."

When Stephen wakes, bruises cover his arms like shadows reaching out. He thinks he's looking forward to it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Hungry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22032796) by [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)


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